After record-breaking early-voting numbers, turnout on Election Day in Arkansas was slower than expected at many polling places with few election officials reporting long lines as well as any major issues.
"It's looking like Election Day totals are going to be down from 2016," Kevin Niehaus, a spokesperson for the Arkansas secretary of state, said. "The heavy early vote and absentee has eaten into the Election Day numbers."
Some 30,000 votes were reported Tuesday from Pulaski County, Niehaus said, compared with 76,397 from Election Day 2016.
Arkansas had record-breaking turnout for early voting, which began on Oct. 19 and ended Monday. More than 803,000 of the state's 1.8 million registered voters cast their ballots early for the 2020 presidential election compared with just over 606,000 during the presidential election in 2016, according to data from the secretary of state.
There were minor snags early on Tuesday.
At least 10 polling places in Jefferson County were not able to open on time after a number of volunteers did not show up, requiring election officials to call in standby workers who did not have the information needed to turn on voting machines, Mike Adam, Jefferson County Election Commission chairman, said.
The issue was resolved within a couple of hours, Adam said. "It was a matter of not having passwords that would activate the machines to run," he said. "Once that was solved, everything was OK."
The Little Rock Police Department, which had patrols frequenting polling places throughout the day, received a call about a truck with campaign paraphernalia parked too close to the Roosevelt Thompson Library, a voting place in west Little Rock, spokesperson Lt. Casey Clark said.
Campaign signs and other promotional material cannot be placed within 100 feet of polling sites. Pulaski County election officials reported a similar incident with another vehicle parked too close to a polling site on Reservoir Road in Little Rock.
The owners of the vehicles at both sites could not be found and the vehicles were towed, election officials said.
"We had a lot of officers out periodically roaming all of the polling sites and have had absolutely nothing," Clark said. "Everything seems to be going really well. We have had no credible or noncredible threats."
The state Board of Election Commissioners also said they received few reports of problems. "The morning started off hectic with some calls from voters being frustrated," Chris Madison, legal counsel for the state Board of Election Commissioners, said. "But it was nothing other than normal issues, nothing like a forest fire or the world is falling apart or anything like that."
"Everything has run pretty smoothly," Madison said.
Also in Pulaski County, approximately 4,000 absentee ballots could not be processed Tuesday evening because of incorrect information or failure to include identification.
Bryan Poe, Pulaski County's elections director, said it is standard for there to be such issues with absentee ballots and that the commission would review them in coming days. "Normally we would review them tonight [Tuesday night] but with such a large volume it will require multiple meetings," he said.
Poe described turnout in Pulaski County as "very slow."
For early voting, Pulaski County reported approximately 110,000 ballots cast out of some 260,000 registered voters. As of 7 p.m. on Tuesday, nearly 30,000 additional ballots were cast.
[RELATED: Full coverage of elections in Arkansas » arkansasonline.com/elections/]
Poe said higher turnout in the county was in more rural areas rather than in urban centers in Little Rock. "The rural precincts were busier than those in the middle of the city," he said.
Pulaski County Circuit and County Clerk Terri Hollingsworth said she had hoped turnout on Tuesday would have been higher.
"It was a letdown for me," Hollingsworth said. "There was so much excitement to see all of those requests for absentee ballots and then everyone going to early vote. I just thought the trend would continue through Election Day."
"There are some voters who just decided to sit it out for some reason," she said. "I don't know what to attribute to it."
"I expected more people over lunch," Robbie Jones, a volunteer holding a campaign sign outside Unitarian Universalist Church in Little Rock, said. "I wonder if it is because more people voted making it less of a dent than it usually is."
In Saline County, 8,868 voters cast ballots on Election Day, bringing the county's unofficial total, including early voting, to 51,251, or about 66 percent of registered voters, Allison Cain, Saline County Election Coordinator, said.
"We have been doing great here," Cain said. "Nothing has happened that we have not been able to rectify or explain to voters."